Renewables Or Fossil Fuels: Which Are, Ultimately, More Efficient? – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Definitions for “efficiency” vary depending on the context of energy discussions. Opinions range widely. Which is more efficient for a nation: renewables or fossil fuels?

For advocates of fossil fuel power, global primary energy consumption hit historic highs in 2023, the hottest year on record, with oil and coal dominating the energy mix. Oil, coal, and gas, though, dump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels, therefore, clearly come with a damaging and costly downside: they are warming our planet faster than anything we have seen in the geological record. They also cause other forms of pollution that severely harm human health.

It’s also noteworthy that today’s fossil energy system is incredibly inefficient: almost two-thirds of all primary energy is wasted in energy production, transportation, and use — that’s before fossil fuel has done any work or produced any benefit. Over $4.6 trillion per year, almost 5% of global GDP and 40% of what the world spends on energy, is wasted due to fossil fuel inefficiency.

Proponents of fossil fuels argue that efficiency arguments for fossil fuels have additional nuances, such as overall productivity and security — aka “energy dominance.” Different fuels carry different amounts of energy per unit of weight, and fossil fuels are more energy dense than other sources. Fossil fuels are easy to transport, inexpensive, and reliable, their proponents say.

They fail to mention that the world will deplete its oil supplies in 47 years. Meanwhile, the idea of stranded assets strikes fear into fossil capitalists.

Fossil fuel proponents are also not sharing that lives have been saved by the deployment of more solar and wind energy.

Big Oil producer BP just announced drastic cuts to its renewable energy investment. That will open up investment into its oil and gas production, which is being termed a “company strategic reset.” As activists at 350.org remind us, this decision is at odds with people’s needs for clean, affordable energy, international climate targets, and scientific consensus.

Many of us think of energy efficiency as a pathway that harnesses technology to help avoid or reduce energy waste. Energy efficient technologies reduce the burden on the electric grid and increase its reliability, and renewable energy and energy efficiency work in synergy. When pursued together, they can bring faster reduction in energy intensity and lower energy costs. Renewables accounted for 15% of the world’s energy mix in 2023 — its highest share in history, but still far from what is needed to curb global warming.

Analyzing the Lifecycle of Fossil Fuels

Energy subsidies are always about what a country values and what it wants to promote. Do the G20 countries take climate change seriously? It is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is “no.” Governments worldwide spend hundreds of billions of dollars or more a year subsidizing fossil fuels. Those totals don’t include pricing in “externalities,” such as putting a dollar figure on fossil fuels’ planet-warming climate pollution, which, according to the International Monetary Fund, would add many more trillions.

The current electrical grid in the US dates back to the 1890s. It’s a patchwork of over 9,000 generators that deliver electricity through more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines.

Mechanical engineers are involved in the development of a new system to manage society’s energy needs more efficiently and effectively. This smart grid will consist of sensors, computers, automation, smart appliances, and other new technologies. By allowing for direct communication, the smart grid will provide insights into and give customers more control over their energy usage.

A unit of traditional energy passes through the global system in five key stages:

1. Extracted as primary energy, such as coal and crude oil from the earth.
2. Processed into final energy that can be used more easily, such as gasoline and electricity, and transported and sold to end-users.
3. Converted into useful energy through devices — boilers and engines, for example. Power generation drives the largest loss by far.
4. Delivers energy services across society, such as heating a home or transporting goods.
5. Create value and prosperity for the consumer — comfort, mobility, and illumination — turning energy into an improvement in prosperity, quality of life, and human satisfaction and happiness.

RMI outlines how standout waste from fossil fuel power plants and internal combustion engines (ICEs) combine for almost half the energy waste globally. Total efficiency is even lower because there are losses between useful energy and energy services and between energy services and prosperity. For instance, some 30% of construction material — steel, concrete, etc. — is wasted on a typical construction site globally.  It takes energy to make energy.

Final Thoughts

“There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals and slow, non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse.” — Ian Dunlop, former chair of the Australian Coal Association

Reducing emissions at the current pace is insufficient to halt the systemic climate changes that the world faces. Returning the planet to safe, near pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide levels has been too incremental. As the National Center for Climate Restoration states,

“Global climate-policymaking is embedded in a culture of sustained failure, with an emphasis on incremental, market-driven processes that are structurally incapable of assessing unquantifiable risks, or mitigating them. There is no longer any realistic chance of an orderly transition and large-scale economic disruption.”

Investing in clean energy, including solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower, is a more cost-effective and efficient option compared to carbon capture technology.

Often, an all-of-the-above energy scenario admits that we need more clean energy, but such a plan combined with the dream of carbon capture technology is too slow and sometimes even counterproductive.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and his colleagues describe in a 2025 article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology how air pollution, global warming, and energy insecurity are three major problems facing the world. They conducted a study to examine whether 149 countries can transition 100% of their business-as-usual (BAU) all-sector energy to electricity and heat obtained from 100% wind-water-solar (WWS) sources to solve energy problems.

The team also looked at “all-of-the-above” policies promoting carbon capture and/or synthetic (as opposed to natural) direct air carbon capture to reduce or offset CO2 emissions. The cost was calculated to be $60–80 trillion/y in social cost, or 9.1–12.1 times the WWS social cost and only 1.1–25.6% lower social cost than BAU.

The authors conclude that any carbon capture/synthetic direct air carbon capture level increases social cost and emissions substantially versus wind-water-solar options. “Thus, policies promoting CC and SDACC should be abandoned,” say Jacobsen and team.

It’s imperative for governments to strengthen and rebuild state institutions so that energy production is linked to climate-relevant, socially-necessary goals. Legislators must embrace and manage the transition out of the path of climate and ecological crises. Our leaders must consciously make returning to a safe climate the first priority of economics and politics.